Before and after: outfit photos from Hawksworth

A couple weekends ago, I had a lovely lunch at Hawksworth with my favourite blogger ladies.  I was quite excited as I've always walked by Hawksworth and the decor inside looked gorgeous (never mind about the food!).  As expected, the food was quite tasty, if pricey and the decor did not disappoint. The color palette of soothing greens and cream of the furniture and leather chesterfields was perfectly elegant and I loved how it contrasted with the silverware.  Also, the restaurant was filled with tons of natural light, so of course we had to take full advantage by taking lots of outfit photos!

Upon editing these photos later, I realized that although window light is amazing, it can also be just as overpowering as direct light.  The intensity was quite surprising to me as I'd always thought window light was very gentle, seeing as it's coming at your subject from the side.  In this case, I felt it was a bit too blue and intense, causing each subject's face to be washed out.  While a little whiteness is nice to blur out those imperfections, too much white just makes you look like a ghost.  Since I wanted to bring back in a warmer feel to these photos and reduce the highlight as much as I could, I played around with adding in some color tone filters, producing a more sepia/pink effect.  Finally, I cropped these photos so that the subject fills the frame and added in some slight vignetting.  I would have tried reducing the highlight itself, but to do these edits I was using the PixlrExpress app, which does not contain that function (although I do highly recommend this app).

Admittedly, I'm still trying to get the hang of this photography thing, so please let me know your constructive criticism.  Which look do you prefer - the before, or after?

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